Back in 2022, I decided to start shooting full-size guns for the first time. Up until that point, I had been basically exclusively shooting subcompact pistols as those were just the most relevant to my training and my interest as a concealed carrier. It was around that time that I set up a private class with Tim Heron, where he gave me a crash course and some of the basics of handling full size guns in competition. And one of the very first things we noticed was when I started to push the speed on my reloads, I just couldn't, it took me too much time and felt really awkward, breaking my grip as dramatically as I had to, just to reach the slide release. And it often resulted in a compromised grip coming back off of the reload. No good. So he recommended something that was pretty revolutionary to me at the time, which was to just use my support hand thumb to release the magazine. It's funny because I thought to myself at the time, is this just like the shooting equivalent to you run like a girl, like you released your magazine like a girl. However, that concern quickly evaporated when I was able to hit the reload time that we'd been aiming for during that private session.
Yes, yes, yes. 1 58. Okay. Yeah. Hell yes. So if you are a smaller handed individual or you just struggled to reach the magazine release, consider using your support hand thumb. So for me, this process looks like bringing my hands back. Ideally, I would be kind of indexing my elbow onto my body. This also kind of sets me up for the reload, and when I do it consistently, my reloads are a lot more consistent. Can't say I'm perfect at it. So ideally I'm coming back and as I'm bringing the gun back, I'm depressing the magazine release here. So handout depressing here. Something you'll notice that I'm doing while I'm doing that is I'm still keeping contact with this portion of my hand. So this part of my hand is still on the grip of the gun and having mostly my contact with my pointer finger on the under part of the trigger guard, keeping that contact or rather that index point, helps my thumb to know where it needs to go versus just floating out in space.
We don't want any of that floating out in space stuff, especially when it comes to reloads. So I'm coming off of shooting and as I'm coming back, I'm pressing the magazine release and coming down here for the reload. And to be clear, this isn't some new revolutionary concept. Lots of people release their magazine with their support, hand, thumb, or other support hand fingers. Heck, honestly, some of the best competitive shooters out there do it. It's just not something that I see discussed all that often, and it was definitely a completely new concept to me at the time. I pulled my Instagram on this a couple of weeks ago and got some really interesting results. So I'm interested to hear, what about you? Do you release your magazine with your dominant hand or your non-dominant hand? And what fingers are you using.
Credit: Tessa Booth